Hannah Presley, judge of Wangaratta Contemporary Textile Award 2020, with winning work Cope

Cope 2020-2021
silk, wool, thread, brass, felt, beads, sequins

Cope is created from three black dresses that were unpicked and reworked into a semicircle.
This shape references a liturgical garment which has not changed it’s shape for hundreds of years, though it’s details have evolved. Traditionally these garments were highly embroidered with the stories of Christ. In this piece Bencke has stitched a modern story, with enduring symbols of power, money, drugs and weapons, along with the detritus of modern life: the comforts and progress with the inevitable waste.
The embroidered beast at the centre is surrounded by stitched line drawings of belongings no longer in use; rubbish collecting at the edges.